A weekend in Karlovy Vary

I spent last weekend in Karlovy Vary, a spa town a couple of hours west of Prague, visiting with friends. And if you haven't been (or even heard of it for that matter) you should, because it is beautiful. I would even go so far as to say it's one of the most beautiful places in Czech Republic, which is saying a lot. Granted apparently there is quite a bit of Russian mafia money in the place so they obviously have the means for building restoration and upkeep unlike many other towns.

Lisa, Suzanne and I arrived late Friday night and spent the evening at Jess and Patty's flat drinking wine and eating snacks. We woke relatively early on Saturday morning and yet somehow only managed to have coffee for breakfast before heading out for the 11am tour of the Becherovka museum.

Becherovka, was originally a stomach medicine that was later marketed as a herbal liqueur to increase popularity (as you do), the tour began with a quick history followed by a walk through the cellar where they keep eerie mannequins depicting the evolution of the medicine turned alcoholic beverage, afterwards you are taken to watch a short but entertaining film and are given 3 shots, beginning with traditional Becherovka, followed by Becherovka Lemond (when I asked our tour guide why 'lemon' was spelt incorrectly, she replied that it was because 'that is how Czech's pronounce it when they say lemon', we still aren't sure if she just made that up or if it is a real fact, but I haven't found anything to disprove it, so we'll just go with it) and finally finishing with KV 14, a super sweet liqueur that's taste was reminiscent of it's humble beginnings as an early 19th century Pepto-Bismol. After the tour and our purely alcoholic breakfast we decided it may be time to get some food in our bellies to control our pre-noon buzz.

Sadly, even though Karlovy Vary is known as a spa town we didn't really partake in the whole spa aspect except to drink the 'healing' mineral water which is foul, I mean absolutely positively foul, like drinking hot rusty blood water. Apparently it's supposed to be very good for you but unless this crap makes you extremely beautiful and intelligent I just can't justify drinking it, and yet we did. Out of some purely sadistic nature we decided to try every single one of them (I suppose maybe the Becherovka had an influence on that decision), but logic was clearly overlooked. Thankfully another thing Karlovy Vary is famous for is their oplatky, a large circular wafer cookie which masked the after tastes of the cave water and has absolutely no health benefit.

So after a morning of eating and drinking, but mostly drinking, we decided to go for a small hike in the surrounding forest which was beautiful and about our only physical activity for the weekend.

In the evening we went out to a bar for drinks, but it would seem that Karlovy Vary has an inexplicably small population for such a quaint city, as we were amongst the only patrons at several places. I am sure it's a more vibrant scene if you come during the summer when they host their annual International Film Festival or even just when the weather warms up and there are more travellers, but I think it may be a rather overlooked location with most backpackers opting for Česky Krumlov and Prague instead. But if you ever find yourself in Czech Republic I recommend checking it out, and opting for a beer instead of the water.